The Kamala Cookbook
When Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in August, she said, “I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys.”
And yet voters know little about the last stage of that journey: the path that led to Harris seizing her party’s nomination after President Joe Biden had announced in July he would not run for reelection. How did an unpopular vice president catapult to the top of the list of replacement candidates? Were deals struck to protect the Biden family if Joe were to endorse Kamala? Was there any discussion of Biden stepping down as president before the end of his term? Was this, as some observers asked, both tongue-in-cheek and in earnest, a coup? In the competitive world of political journalism, the behind-the-scenes story of the machinations of Team Kamala would have been a major scoop.
It is the scoop that never was. In a lengthy interview in early August with Biden adviser Anita Dunn, Ryan Lizza of Politico asked about perceptions that Harris had effectively been installed without ever having had to win over a single Democratic-primary voter: “Do you agree with some of the people who were disappointed about this, that it was, essentially, a ‘coup’?” Dunn sought to shut down such talk immediately, saying Harris had been “terrifically loyal” throughout the upheavals of the summer. Later, when asked about the “decision to endorse Harris, and her quick consolidation of the party,” Dunn claimed there was “never a question” about Biden endorsing Harris. Lizza, like many other political journalists, simply let the matter drop.
The lack of curiosity about how Harris secured both Biden’s endorsement and the nomination so quickly is odd given what we know from media reports on Biden’s long-standing concerns about Harris’s performance as vice president. Just last year, the New York Times described it thus: “The painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and around the nation … said [Harris] had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country.” Adding insult to injury, the story noted, “Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”
In September, reporters Mike Allen and Alex Thompson of Axios revisited the question and wondered, “Why did President Biden’s top advisers routinely leak word they found her performance as vice president disappointing or episodically problematic” before she became the nominee? Why did Biden advisers worry Harris would “struggle under the glare of national pressure”? In addition, there was the matter of her long-standing reputation as an unpopular boss with a “high turnover rate” among staff: “Of the 47 Harris staffers publicly disclosed to the Senate in 2021, only five still worked for her as of this spring.” And yet, after raising these questions, Axios shrugged, noting only that the Harris campaign repeatedly answered, “No comment.”
It is notable that the only story the media want to tell in the “first draft of history” they often boast about writing is one that avoids any discussion of Kamala Harris. Instead, it focuses on who urged Biden to get out of the race. The heroine of that story, if you are a Democrat who didn’t want Biden to run, is canny octogenarian Nancy Pelosi, who supposedly put country above her “friendship” with Biden to save the Democratic Party from itself. As Jill Filipovic described it at Slate, Pelosi “looked at the polls, saw no path to victory, and understood that the best way to get through to Biden was to confront the president in private, while remaining respectfully assertive in public.” Politico quoted anonymous Democratic sources who made Pelosi sound less like a friend than a Mafia enforcer: “Nancy made it clear that they could do this the easy way, or the hard way.”
This narrative has the advantage of allowing reporters to ignore lingering questions about what happened and instead tie up loose ends with a tidy bow. As Slate put it, “Nancy Pelosi got the one thing she always wants: a way to win.” The article quoted her as saying that her support of Harris was “official, personal, and political.” What this narrative also does, inadvertently, is make Harris seem like a non-player character in the biggest game of her life.
What little we do know of the behind-the-scenes way Biden’s announcement unfolded is pablum. A recent Associated Press story helpfully informs voters, “It is known that Harris is a foodie and likes to cook. In fact, she had just made a pancakes-and-bacon breakfast for her niece’s 6- and 8-year-old daughters on the July morning when Biden called with the news that he was dropping out of the race.”
This approach is indicative. Throughout her tenure as vice president, and more intensely since she became the Democratic nominee, reporters describe world events and domestic political challenges such as war, the border crisis, or inflation as happening to her, not because of the administration’s policies. Although voters still don’t know in her own words Harris’s views on immigration, or gun rights, or fracking, the media have made sure that we know she used to wash collard greens in her bathtub before parties. In wartime, she might or might not support our allies like Israel, but “at snack time, Harris reaches for Doritos.”
Some of this incuriosity is no doubt the result of careful cultivation of the media by Harris in the last two years. As Semafor’s Max Tani reported in late July, Harris has “invited a parade of prominent television anchors and media executives to dine with her at the Naval Observatory, given personal tours of her garden to journalists from diverse backgrounds, and shaped trips to do media appearances with the outlets serving Democratic-leaning groups the White House refers to as ‘coalition media.’” Harris has fêted the hosts of Morning Joe over dinner, as well as Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker, and doesn’t discriminate between prestige and nontraditional media. As Semafor notes, “Staff from gossip site The Shade Room snagged an invite to her holiday party,” and off-the-record meetings included visits by the authors of “fairly niche abortion Substacks.”
Instead of running down the story themselves, media outlets have scolded Republicans who posited their own theories about Biden’s departure and its resemblance to a bloodless coup. In a piece that included charts and an extended note on its “methodology,” the New York Times decried the use of words such as “coup” and “cover-up” and claimed, “A vast majority of prominent Republicans have treated the development [Biden’s exit] with suspicion or scorn.” New York magazine declared such speculation “lurid,” stating, “This line of argument is as feeble as it is loud and insistent. If Biden could be brushed aside against his will, why did it take so long, and why did the alleged orchestrators of the ‘coup’ insist that Biden himself make the decision?”
A willing media have continued to serve as the Harris campaign’s boosters by avoiding asking difficult questions about her policy positions. As New York’s Gabriel Debenedetti wrote recently, a “popular media narrative” suggests that Harris should take clear policy positions on important issues, but “people close to Harris” say “her primary job now is to win an election and that most voters need to understand her values and priorities, not her white papers.”
In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris said, “My entire career, I’ve only had once client: the people.” Is it a good idea to keep your client in the dark about not only how you got your job but also what your plans are for leading them, given that they ultimately decide whether you get that job and pay your salary? Harris is betting that it is. And given the media’s incuriosity about her résumé and rise to power, it’s a clever gamble. For the ever-more distrusted and increasingly unpopular and unprofitable mainstream press, however, it’s just another path of indignity leading to the industry’s grave.
Photo: AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson